Mossad's most audacious plots

The Israeli secret service Mossad has a long history of skilfully targeted
killings and sophisticated plots since it was created in 1951.

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CCTV footage of the killing of a Hamas commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in a Dubai hotel

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Two of the assassins arrive at Mr Mabhouh's hotel room door

By Paul Chapman in Wellington

12:18PM BST 20 Jul 2011

Its reputation for ruthless efficiency was established with the abduction of Adolf Eichmann, a leading Nazi who had fled to Argentina after the Second World War.

Mossad agents found Eichmann in 1960 and smuggled him back to Israel, where he was tried and executed.

In the 1970s, in an operation known as the Wrath of God, the agency hunted down and killed 11 Palestinians it blamed for the Munich massacre.

Among the more elaborate and daring plots Mossad is known or suspected of being involved in are:

1968: The German freighter Scheersberg A disappears on a voyage between Antwerp and Genoa, together with 200 tonnes of yellowcake, or concentrated natural uranium, which was reportedly transferred to an Israeli ship. After 15 days at sea, the Scheersberg A docked at the Turkish port of Iskenderun.

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1979: A devastating explosion at a factory in Toulouse, France, producing components for an Iraqi nuclear reactor is blamed on Mossad. An Israeli air strike in 1981 subsequently destroyed the reactor itself.

1986: Mossad undercover agent Cheryl Bentov lures Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistleblower, from Britain to Italy. In Rome he is abducted by Mossad and returned to Israel to be put on trial for treason.

1990: Israeli agents are blamed for shooting dead Gerald Bull, a Canadian engineer and ballistics expert, outside his Brussels apartment. Bull was working on Project Babylon, a supergun for Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

1997: Khaled Mashal, the Hamas representative in Jordan, is injected in the ear with a toxin. Two Mossad agents posing as Canadian tourists are arrested by Jordanian authorities. The killing attempt fails.

1998: Five Mossad agents are caught wiretapping the home of a Hezbollah agent in the Swiss city of Bern. Four are freed but a fifth is jailed for a year by a Swiss court.

2010: An estimated 26 Israeli agents travelling on false foreign passports are suspected of being involved in the killing in Dubai of Mahmoud al-Mabouh, a senior Hamas military commander. The incident leads to a diplomatic row with Britain, Ireland and Australia, whose passports were forged for the operation.

2011: Saudi Arabian security forces claim Mossad sent a vulture into their airspace to gather information. They say the bird was carrying a GPS transmitter and a tag bearing an identification code from Tel Aviv University. A few weeks earlier, an Egyptian official claimed a shark that attacked tourists off the coast of Sharm el Sheikh had been placed there by the Israeli spy service.